My first published food photo

I was sent an email last month asking if I would be interested in cooking a meal and having the photograph published in a magazine. It was completely out of the blue if I’m honest, it was entirely unexpected, I was incredibly flattered and, of course, said yes please.

If you don’t know already I am very lucky to have another half with a degree in photography. I’m not convinced it’s quite what he envisaged taking regular photos of but what started off as a little help and encouragement turned into me being able to concentrate on the cooking and not having to think about all the things I don’t understand! Look back through some of my photos from 2010 and you’ll see what I mean.

When I started my blog I was taking the photos on my phone and a little camera but as time moved on I really wanted to improve my photographs. Improving the photographs is one thing and I am very fortunate to have someone who understands depth of field and perspective and all sorts of other things. The other thing that goes along with the photographs is the styling which we have learnt a lot about over the past year. A typical meal will involve me spouting off a load of ideas of things I want to make, calming the ideas down, making it, discussing how it looks, taking the photo and (the best bit) eating it!

I have so much more to learn and so many things to do to improve the styling and photographs further but I was really happy with how the photos turned out for the magazine shoot.

I have learnt a lot about how to make things easier for myself in the future. Turning round and saying, “I want it to look like this”, is really unhelpful apparently! It’s great to have someone to explain why things won’t work at that angle and why and how I think of things as rectangles rather than squares. It’s a learning curve and one that I am really glad to be sharing with someone this patient.

It was very bizarre to walk into a shop, pick up a copy of Hello! magazine and find a photo that you spent a long time preparing for in actual print. It was great to pick up a copy and show everyone I know. It really meant more to me than just the photo though, it means that someone else thought that what I have been doing was good enough for everyone to see it.

Comments

Congratulations! I’m not a buyer of Hello magazine, so I’ll not be seeing it at first hand…I had a photo published in a Sugar-crafting book earlier this year. A picture of a Willow Catkin – not even one from my plot – which the author had located on the internet, and deemed perfect for the publication.

Congratulations! I’ve noted a difference in your photos of late, both in styling, lighting, varied ‘scenes’ and they are really great. I have felt it’s a ‘work in progress’ but a fun one to give more depth to the food we feature. Hope you are having fun with it and your efforts do show! Bravo!

congratulations to you , carol! you are so lucky to have someone beside you to guide you on photographing, i feel quite stressful sometimes taking photographs of food for blogging purpose but thankfully, recently a friend guided me on some functions in my camera and that’s a bit easier now 🙂